


The Way The Story Goes

by aban_ataashi



Series: A Little Bit Of Sunlight (Desta's Story) [15]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Abusive Parents, F/M, Pillars Prompts Weekly, and if that doesnt interest you i dont know what will, fairytale AU, featuring iselmyr as a dragon, nothing graphic but its aloths backstory so yeah, this is a very niche fic and im not going to apologize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 12:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20389723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_ataashi/pseuds/aban_ataashi
Summary: There is a prince. There is a dragon. There is a way this type of story is supposed to play out.





	The Way The Story Goes

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! I've had a bit of writer's block lately but after browsing old prompts this idea came out of nowhere and demanded to be written. This is a fill for Weekly Prompt #97 Roll For It, featuring Aloth+ Fairytale AU + arranged marriage (with a bit of flexibility regarding the arranged marriage part).  
Thank you everyone for reading, enjoy!

The prince was born with a dragon.

Dragons and the reasoning behind them were something of a mystery in the kingdom. Nobody knew where they came from, or why the hatchlings only appeared in the company of newborn royalty. Nobody knew how they picked their companions. None of these questions were all that important, in the end. What mattered was that there were certain types of stories that started with a dragon, and there was a way these stories were supposed to go.

The king and queen turned their backs for one minute, and suddenly there was a tiny, iridescent dragon curled up next to their son in his crib. That was the beginning of the story.

The dragon was not killed. Not right away- there was an order to this sort of thing, after all. As a hatchling it could easily be contained, and so it was, in an iron cage that the king kept in the basement.

Prince Aloth was forbidden to go near the dragon. He was told he would see the beast soon enough, but for now he had to attend his studies and other princely duties. He didn’t mind. Aloth liked his studies. He could spend hours in the palace library, reading over maps and records of kings long gone.

One day, his parents told him, he would be a king. Aloth wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Being a ruler didn’t seem very pleasant. His mother was hardly ever home, always off to meet with some duke or lord or ambassador. His father was always home, and always in a sour mood because of something that had gone wrong in the kingdom.

The king was in an especially bad mood the day a neighboring queen came to visit, pulling her own young heir behind her as she entered the throne room. The king looked at her, then down at her child, and sighed. “There’s no point in asking,” he growled. “The prince has a dragon.”

The queen’s diplomatic veneer dropped immediately. “Oh,” she said stiffly, clutching her child’s arm. “I see.” The pair left soon after.

Aloth was disappointed. He didn’t have many friends, and he’d been hoping to spend time with the other royal child. He asked his father why they left so soon, and his father sighed. “Everybody wants their child to marry a future king. But nobody wants to make them fight a dragon for it.”

Aloth puzzled over those words all night, until at last curiosity got the better of him. When he was certain everyone else was asleep, he snuck down into the palace cellars, past the locked doors, until he came to the room where the cage was kept.

The dragon was bigger than he expected. Aloth remembered, very faintly, a tiny lizard curled around his neck. Now that lizard was the size of a warhound. The creature was a dark, inky purple, with scales that glistened even in the dim light of the dungeons and wings that looked cramped within the iron cage.

When he stepped into the room, the dragon whipped it slender neck around and stared him down with cold silver eyes. She bared her teeth and screeched, long and loud. Aloth jumped, but did not turn and run. He was transfixed.

“You’re the dragon,” he whispered.

He didn’t expect an answer, but as the dragon met his gaze a voice cut through his thoughts. It was a voice without sound, without source, but Aloth knew in that moment in came from the dragon.

_ Iselmyr._

Aloth didn’t notice the guards, not until they pulled him out of the room with strong hands. The king was furious- at the guards, at the dragon, and most of all at Aloth. And when the king was furious, he was frightening.

Aloth didn’t tell him about the voice, and he never tried to visit his dragon again.

Aloth was thirteen when the dragon became too large and angry for its cage, and that’s when they knew it was time for him to move.

His parents had found him a nice tower on the edge of their kingdom. It was quiet and secluded, with plenty of space for a young prince and his swiftly growing dragon. Aloth was old enough now to know how these things worked. He would stay here for a few years, with his books and his tower and his dragon. His dragon would grow more fearsome by the day, until at last a knight brave enough to slay the beast would come along. Then the two of them would return to the palace together, where they would be wed immediately.

“This really doesn’t seem like the most logical way to deal with this,” he protested, but he knew nobody would listen to him. This was the way things were done.

In a way, Aloth’s seclusion was a relief. The last few years had been stressful, to put it mildly. The king’s violent moods only worsened with time, and he was more critical of his son with each passing day. His mother tried to tell him that his father was simply worried about his impending departure, but at thirteen Aloth was too old for such fantasies.

In any case, spending a few years with nothing but books for company seemed less like an imprisonment and more like a lovely vacation. The only drawback was the creature outside his window. That was how Aloth thought of her- the creature, the beast, the dragon. Not _Iselmyr. _And he certainly never acknowledged the voice that entered his head whenever she was near.

The dragon spent her first few days of freedom screeching and flying manically above the trees. Aloth barely slept a wink with all the ruckus she made. At last he went to the window, and without a thought of danger thrust his head outside. “Will you be _quiet?”_

The dragon just stared at him before leaning her head back and letting out a high-pitched roar. _Nae. Ah bin stuck in that cage fer ages. Noo that ah have mah freedom, ah plan tae enjoy it._

Aloth scowled, his annoyance getting in the way of his determination to ignore the dragon’s words. “Why do you talk like that?”

_Ah gab lik' a dragon, laddie. Mebbe ye shud huv a go of it sometime. _

“I don’t see why you’re so satisfied with yourself.” He leaned against the window, studying the strange creature for a long moment. “You’re the reason my father hates me, you know,” he said at last.

_Yer da hates ye ‘cause he’s a prick, _the dragon answered.

Aloth didn’t have an answer for that. He turned away from the window, not wanting to look at the creature any longer. “Just please keep it down while I’m trying to sleep.”

He received no answer, but the sound of flapping wings told him the dragon had taken off towards the forest. That, he supposed, would have to be good enough for now.

With nothing else to do, Aloth taught himself magic.

He already knew a bit of the theory, and there had been a few rudimentary lessons back at the palace. He’d been a natural, according to his teacher, but there hadn’t been time to learn much. Now, however, he had all the time in the world.

And it was more than a way to stave off boredom. The magic Aloth learned was a challenge, a craft, a way to exert some amount of control over a world that had never allowed him any. When he ran out of books to read and spells to learn, he invented his own, and felt the smallest spark of pride at every success.

While Aloth learned, the dragon grew. She had been roughly the size of a horse when they moved into the tower, but with each passing year her size and power increased. By the time Aloth was sixteen, she was larger than a house with a wingspan that blocked out the sun when she flew.

Such a dragon did not go unnoticed, and sure enough, the knights began to flock to Aloth’s tower.

Aloth found his first encounter with a knight to be an altogether disappointing experience. The poor fool came to the tower quite gallantly, but a few minutes of battling with the dragon quickly put an end to such confidence. Aloth sighed as he watched the knight’s hasty retreat.

_Ye did nae want me tae let that wanker thro’, did ye? _The dragon asked scathingly.

“No,” Aloth answered. “I was just hoping I’d attract some knights with a bit more competence.” But despite his disappointment at the knight’s lack of preparation, Aloth wasn’t overly concerned. There was a way these things went, and the first knight to attempt a rescue was rarely successful.

Besides, Aloth was in the middle of deciphering some very interesting magical runes, and didn’t really want to be interrupted anyway.

Aloth shouldn’t have been surprised when the king showed up. He was in his twenties now, after all, and his parents had been expecting him to return to the palace plus one knight and minus one dragon by the time he’d turned eighteen. But he’d barely noticed the time going by, and so hadn’t been expecting to see his father again so soon.

“Get down here!” the king roared at the foot of the tower. “This has gone on long enough!”

Aloth stared down from his window. In truth, he could go down if he wished; the dragon was off on one of her hunting trips, and even if she were there Aloth had learned long ago that for all of her shrieking and posturing, she meant him no real harm. But looking down at the furious king, Aloth found that he had no desire to leave his tower at this particular moment.

Ten years ago, that wouldn’t have mattered. He would have come running at his father’s call. But time and the fact that his father was thirty feet below him gave him the courage to call back, “I would, but I was told I needed to stay here and wait for a knight.”

“Blast the knights! They’re useless, the whole lot of them! This whole farce is a waste of our time!”

Aloth raised an eyebrow, although from his high vantage point he doubted his father could tell. “I wasn’t under the impression you would be missing me so much.”

“This isn’t about you. The kingdom needs its prince. And if no knight is coming, we should be arranging a marriage for you, not letting you laze away out here on your own.”

“I’ve been keeping myself occupied. I’ve actually cultivated quite the magical ability-”

“And now you’re doing _magic?” _The king spat the word. “You think sorcery tricks will help the embarrassment of a king’s son who’s never seen at court because he’s _still_ waiting to be rescued from a dragon?”

Aloth’s voice shook with his next words, and he couldn’t tell if it was because of anxiety or anger. “May I remind you, this was never _my _idea.”

“Nor was it mine. There is a way these things are done, and some traditions should be respected. But now I’m thinking we would have been better off killing that dragon when it first-”

A deafening roar filled the air, and a dark shadow fell over the king and his entourage just before a fully-grown dragon landed next to the tower. She studied the gathering with a critical eye, then leaned back and let out another enraged roar.

_Thay bothering ye, laddie?_

Aloth hesitated for just a moment, throat tightening as he looked down at his father. “Yes,” he whispered.

The king’s guards and knights stumbled back, but the king himself stood his guard. Despite the dragon before him, his eyes were still locked on Aloth, and his face was a mask of rage. “I’ll deal with the beast myself,” he declared, and drew his sword.

In spite of himself, Aloth flinched, and that was when the dragon pounced.

The king went flying back as the dragon’s claw swept across his armor. He staggered to his feet, winded and bruised, but his armor had blocked the worst of the blow and he still gripped the sword in his hand. He raised the blade, and growled, “You die today, dragon.”

A wave of something- anger, perhaps, or the desire to do something right for once, or perhaps just simple, insane bravery- crashed over Aloth, and before he could second-guess himself he held out his hand and willed a blazing heat to fill the hilt of his father’s sword.

The king dropped his sword with a surprised cry. He glared up at the tower, and Aloth met his eyes. “She’s not dying today. And her name is Iselmyr.”

Islemyr looked back at him with a sharp, dragonish grin, and Aloth didn’t know how but he knew what to do next. He closed his eyes and focused on the same magic he’d just used, but instead of sending it towards his father, he sent it to Iselmyr.

The great dragon opened her mouth and breathed Aloth’s flame across the field, drawing a scorched black line in the grass between the king and the tower.

The king scrambled backwards out of reach of the flames. He shot one last venomous look at Aloth and Iselmyr, and then gathered his knights and what dignity he had left and retreated into the distance.

Aloth was reading as he walked, and that was why he didn’t immediately notice that he had a visitor.

The book was one he’d wanted to get his hands on for a long time, and he’d managed to balance it atop the bundle of goods from the market so that he didn’t have to wait until he reached the tower to begin reading. His thoughts were full of new spells, and it wasn’t until he’d reached the clearing that he heard a voice that wasn’t supposed to be there.

The person- a knight, from the look of their armor- was standing next to Iselmyr, who was sprawled out on the grass, and Aloth had a brief moment of panic before realizing that the dragon was not injured but relaxed. Her eyes fixed on Aloth as he entered the clearing, and the knight turned to follow her gaze.

Words of greeting died in Aloth’s throat. The knight was like nobody he had ever seen before- her skin was covered in a deep green moss, with branches and thorns that twisted down her shoulders and disappeared behind her armor. Her hair was dark red, the color of roses from the palace gardens, and her eyes were a strange glowing gold.

She grinned at Aloth and waved energetically. “I love your dragon!”

Aloth blinked. “Thank you?”

“She doesn’t seem vicious at all. Well, I did see her hunt down a deer, but that’s no worse than any other hunter of the forest, villagers included. She isn’t hostile to people, at least not to me. And I would really rather not slay her if she’s just out here minding her own business-”

“Excuse me,” Aloth interrupted. “But who are you, exactly?”

“Oh, right,” the woman said with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m Desta. I’m a bit of an adventurer, you see, and I heard that an evil wizard lived out here with his dragon, and it seemed like something I should check out.” She shot a fond glance towards Iselmyr. “But neither of you seem very evil. Which is good news! It would be a shame to kill such a lovely creature.”

Aloth gave Iselmyr a questioning glance, and the dragon shrugged. _Shae brought me good fairn. Ah lik’ the lass._

With a sigh, Aloth turned his gaze back to the woman. “So…you’re not a knight here to slay my dragon, then?”

“A knight?” Desta waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, no. Not really my style. Lots of charging in and fighting things for no real reason. Plus… well…” Desta motioned to herself with a shrug. “Knights can be a bit weird about curses, you know.”

“Curses?”

“My parents made a deal with a fae from the forest. Honestly, I don’t know what they expected. It’s really no big deal, but I’m sure you know what knights are like about this kind of thing. I can’t spend two minutes around them before they’re trying to break the spell. It’s a bit tiring.”

For a moment Aloth could only stare at his strange visitor, this cursed adventurer who made friends with his dragon. “That’s not how things are usually done.”

Desta smiled. “No, I guess it’s not.” She looked down at Iselmyr and ran a hand over her smooth purple scales. “What about you? You have wizard robes and a dragon and tower in the woods, but you don’t seem like a wicked sorcerer to me.”

“I suppose I’m a bit unusual, as well.”

Desta laughed. “Good to know I’m not the only one.”

A strange fluttering sensation rose in Aloth’s chest at the sound of her laugh. Out here, he didn’t meet people very often, but even if he did, he doubted he would ever again meet anyone like Desta. “I was about to make myself some tea,” he said quickly before his nerve failed him. “Would you like to stay and visit a while?”

“I’d love to!” Desta said with a bright grin.

Aloth nodded and stuttered some sort of response. Iselmyr let out a low rumble of amusement, but he wasn’t thinking of her smug, mocking expression. Aloth was thinking of the warrior that was supposed to come and defeat his dragon and win his heart, the way this story was supposed to play out. He’d discarded the tale long ago, convinced that he held no place in such a story. Now he wondered if he was simply in a different version.

If he was, he had to admit- he liked this version better.


End file.
